


Long Story Short, It Was a Bad Time

by Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, An Entire Fic to Justify that Threesome, Angst and Humor, Beaubeau Said There Was a Narrative Promise of a Threesome, Either Solas/Lavellan Endgame or OT3 Endgame, F/M, Felassan lives, I Have No Willpower, I Have Not Decided Yet But Note Some Lavellan/Felassan Stuff Along the Way, I Promise It Will Be Okay In The End, Inquisition Timeline, Is It Still a Slow Burn If They Already Smashed?, Multi, POV Multiple, Slow Burn, Solas Has Had a Lot of Bad Days and Will Have More, Solavellan Hell, Threesome - F/M/M, Your Author Still In Her Feelings With the Taylor Swift
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:33:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29333109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard/pseuds/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard
Summary: The unauthorized sequel to 'It Would've Been Sweet, If It Could've Been Me.'In which Felassan lives, Ellana thinks he's pretty sus, and Solas is still having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
Relationships: Felassan/Female Lavellan (Dragon Age), Felassan/Solas/Female Lavellan, Female Inquisitor/Solas (Dragon Age), Female Lavellan/Solas, Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan
Comments: 81
Kudos: 71





	1. Long Story Short, It Was a Bad Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beaubashley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubashley/gifts).
  * Inspired by [It Would've Been Sweet, If It Could've Been Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27481111) by [beaubashley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubashley/pseuds/beaubashley), [Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard/pseuds/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard). 



> I had STRONG doubts about whether to continue 'It Could Have Been Sweet, If It Could Have Been Me.'
> 
> That work is complete! Look away! Imagine your own ending! Don't read this and lose all those possibilities!
> 
> There are a bazillion Inquisition-era Solavellan works. This one is probably not going to be better than those! 
> 
> Anyway, it looks like I'm writing a whole-ass fic just to justify the potential Solas/Lavellan/Felassan threesome I off-handedly suggested in a single line in the last one.

‘Surprised to be alive’ was a pleasant state of being, Felassan reflected. He did his best to focus on that feeling, because camping with Fen’Harel was remarkably unpleasant. For all Felassan had braced himself for summary execution a week ago, he was not entirely certain that murder was off the table even after several days of sitting in the woods with the old wolf. 

When Felassan inquired what their next steps were, Fen’Harel looked at him as though he’d rather kill him than inform him. 

“I await further reports from my agents,” Fen’Harel said, making it clear that he no longer counted Felassan among that number. 

When Felassan offered to get back to stirring up the hornet’s nest that was Orlesian politics, Fen’Harel began sorting through Felassan’s supplies and relieving him of everything of potentially offensive use. 

“I believe it more prudent to keep an eye on you myself,” Fen’Harel said, with a cool glare that specified that he’d thought about seeing Felassan dead rather than himself so inconvenienced.

When Felassan announced that he hated porridge and inquired whether Fen’Harel was willing to share his granola, Fen’Harel wrapped a defensive arm around his pack and told Felassan to make himself useful and go catch some rabbits. 

He’d thought about murdering him again, Felassan cheerfully surmised. But he hadn’t done it. That was personal growth. He wondered what Fen’Harel had been up to in the weeks since they’d last spoken. 

It was surprising to see the man himself after dealing chiefly with a giant Fade wolf for so many Ages. Fen’Harel was not renowned for offering a personal touch in his affairs. But the time apart had not been kind to him; if Felassan had met him on the street in Halamshiral, he would have said that this was a man who was really going through it. 

Perhaps Fen’Harel was more personally torn up about the whole ‘accidentally breaking the world’ bit than Felassan had perceived over the past few years, or perhaps there was some more recent concern on his mind. Either way, as long as ending Felassan’s extended and interesting life was falling lower on Fen’Harel’s list of priorities than stewing in his feelings, Felassan was reasonably content to cook and wait on Fen’Harel’s other plans. 

Felassan managed to catch a few skinny rabbits even in the deepening winter, but he got no gratitude when he brought them back to prepare and roast. His cooking had been the subject of several disparaging comments over the past few days, and Fen’Harel gave the meal a disappointed frown before rolling out his pack, instructing Felassan to wake him up when the rabbits were ready. 

Still, it was another day alive, so Felassan whistled to himself as he turned the stick that roasted their breakfast while Fen’Harel conducted his business in the Fade. Felassan had not been privy to the other plans Fen’Harel had been managing while Felassan was supposedly obtaining use of the eluvian network, but he supposed that Fen’Harel was in search of some power source equal to the ones he’d wielded against the Evanuris. 

Felassan had recently read a very engaging novel by a man out of Kirkwall who unknowingly described the tainted focus Fen’Harel had locked away underground. Felassan had been very glad to receive no orders for Kirkwall; that city sounded even more unpleasant than Halamshiral, and that was saying quite a bit. Perhaps someone else had been chosen to fall on that red lyrium sword; Felassan wished them well of it. 

Felassan realized that his rabbits were burning and hastened to pull them off the fire. He shot a nervous glance at Fen’Harel’s sleeping form--stirring, but not yet awake--and tried to scrape some of the burnt bits off with a stick, Fen’Harel having previously relieved him of his belt knife. He noticed that the rabbits were still rather raw in the middle as he did so, and in that consternation did not see Fen’Harel when he came bolt awake and leapt to his feet.

“I need a map,” Fen’Harel growled, the sound angry and sudden enough to make Felassan drop the rabbits. Felassan winced, but Fen’Harel was no longer thinking about breakfast.

Felassan swallowed nervously. “Of which country?”

It was a reasonable enough question, but Felassan saw murder roll across the surface of Fen’Harel’s mind again at the fractional delay. 

“Ferelden,” Fen’Harel spat. 

Felassan didn’t have a paper map of that most backwards land, but he knew the spell Fen’Harel had in mind. He rolled forward to a kneeling position. He gathered his mana and put his hand against the ground, pulling hard through the Veil to gather enough energy to change a dozen square feet around him. 

He wheezed at the effort required to pull the earth up and sustain it--earth was always the hardest element to manipulate--but he got the country reasonably well depicted in a topographical map across their campsite. The campfire burned in the middle of Lake Calenhad, evaporating it into hissing steam. 

Fen’Harel walked to the southwest corner of the map, squatted, and then looked north, his expression stricken. 

“Where are we?” he demanded. 

“Take two big steps northwest from where you are,” Felassan said through his labored breath. He could not hold the spell much longer, and then he was going to want a nap. 

Fen’Harel took the two steps and then squatted again to stare at a spot on the edge of the map that held no points of interest, to the best of Felassan’s knowledge. 

“Have you heard of the Conclave?” Fen’Harel asked him. “The peace negotiations between the human mages and Templars?”

Ah! Yes. “In Haven,” Felassan said, pleased to be of use. “That’s right there where you’re looking, yes.” A tiny hamlet. Not visible on the map unless you put your nose nearly in the dirt. 

Fen’Harel’s expression was more distraught than Felassan had seen it in thousands of years. “Is there anything else in the area? Anything at all.” He made a wide circle with his hand. 

“No, not between Orzammar and Honnleath,” Felassan reported confidently. “Except Tarasyl’an Telas, of course, but you’d know if anyone were there, I’m sure.” 

Fen’Harel made a strangled noise in the back of his throat and lunged for his pack, shoving supplies in.

“We are leaving now,” he said in a voice that brooked no delays. 

Felassan waited until they were moving west at a pace that was barely short of a sprint to ask more questions. It took him a while to gather the breath necessary to speak. He was taller than Fen’Harel, but the man was moving as though pursued by Andruil’s hounds again. 

“Are we going to the Conclave?” he asked plaintively. He couldn’t imagine that Fen’Harel much cared about who won between the two warring factions. 

For a minute, he thought that Fen’Harel did not intend to respond. 

“The darkspawn magister Corypheus has my focus,” Fen’Harel finally answered, but in very short tones. “And he is moving in the direction of the Conclave.” 

Oh, wolf cock, Felassan thought. It was going to be a bad day for whatever agent had let _that_ happen. Good thing Fen’Harel seemed to be going off of executions. Though Felassan thought that perhaps abject failure might be more forgivable than betrayal. 

“So we’re going to get your focus back?” Felassan clarified as they puffed along. 

A split second hesitation reshaped Fen’Harel’s face at that supposition. 

“Yes,” he finally replied. “Before it explodes.” 

At that grim warning, they both ran faster.

* * *

“No room at the inn, baby,” Ellana told her halla, who looked back at her with what Ellana imagined to be disappointment as they turned away from the warm stable. Vherlen did not take up much room, but no matter how much Ellana vouched for her, the human stablemasters were unwilling to let her into the loose box with the draft animals. 

Haven was cold and crowded and tense, shems and elves alike side-eyeing her and her vallaslin. Her charming smile was nearly worn out, and she hadn’t even heard anything definitive on what was going on up at the temple.

Ellana led her halla back to her crude campsite at the edge of the growing tent city. Ellana was running out of money for fodder, and game was scarce around this large of a group. It would be nugs for Ellana and elfroot for Vherlen if this Conclave did not hurry up and conclude some time soon. 

Ellana despondently thought about the last Arlath’vhen, when it had taken three weeks for the Keepers to decide that nobody else better go into the Brecilian Forest, even though the last clan to journey in had all been eaten by werewolves. And that had been an _easy_ decision. The mages and Templars up the mountain were still likely in discussion of whether they ought to shake hands, just glare, or attempt exotic forms of magical murder. 

She had never been renowned for her patience, but she was particularly eager to show these shems her back and go home. The last stretch of travel had felt more lonely than all the hundreds of miles before. 

“Maybe we’ll stop and see Clan Boranehn on the way out,” Ellana cooed at Vherlen, scratching the halla between her horns. “Wouldn’t you like that?” 

The halla gave a brief bleat of pleasure, which Ellana chose to interpret as acquiescence. If the Conclave broke up in the next few days, she’d have the time. One of Ellana’s cousins had left with Boranehn after the Arlath’vhen. She could go and collect a hug. 

She wanted a hug. 

“If these stubborn shems won’t work their problems out, maybe I’ll go up and bang their heads together,” Ellana suggested to the halla. “Lock them all in one aravel until they’re friends again or they’ve killed each other. Should I do that?”

The halla had no further comment, but Ellana knew that their patience with the humans was coming to a rapid end. 

* * *

Solas nearly wept with relief upon reaching the outskirts of Haven and seeing no greater fires than owed to forges or hearths. 

He thought Felassan was impressed at the pace he’d set; Solas had been awake and traveling across the sundered world for barely a year, Felassan for more than a decade, and yet Felassan had been the one suggesting more halts to their wild sprint east to the pass. They were both very ragged and skinny, but they had succeeded: the magister had not yet unlocked Solas’ orb. 

Solas walked the two of them toward the center of the encampment where a cluster of stone buildings huddled up against the walls of the Chantry. 

“So what does this magister look like, anyway?” Felassan whispered into his ear as he suspiciously regarded the mix of pilgrims and petitioners who awaited news of the Conclave at the base of the mountain. 

“Nine or ten feet tall, shrouded with red lyrium. Tainted,” Solas absently replied.

There was a group of elves washing laundry behind the Chantry, but none had hair the right color. He moved on. 

Felassan stopped in his tracks. “That sounds fairly conspicuous,” he observed mildly. “Perhaps we might just wait until we hear screams and then go fetch your orb from the source?” 

Solas ground his teeth. He should not send Felassan away so that he didn’t have to look at another person he’d disappointed. Even if Felassan had proven himself wholly unreliable on account of Solas’ many failings, he was still a second set of eyes, and it was a big area to search.

“We need to find someone. _Before_ the magister unlocks the orb,” Solas ultimately decided to explain. “A woman. Yellow vallaslin. Andruil’s. My height. Traveling with a halla.” 

Felassan wrinkled up his face in confusion. “Who? I don’t remember anyone like that. None of Andruil’s people came over.” 

“She’s Dalish,” Solas gritted out. “We will split up for now. If you find her--” he nearly instructed Felassan to bring Nue to him, but he could imagine how well _that_ would go, “--contact me immediately.” 

The man’s face was still wholly perplexed. He had to know that Solas had quickling agents, but all had been handled via intermediaries such as Felassan had been. It was uncharacteristic of him to personally get involved in any of his fieldwork unless it required great magical abilities. 

The last month had been uncharacteristic. It seemed likely to continue apace. 

“ _Go_ ,” he growled at Felassan, letting a little of that anger that had toppled an empire into his voice, and the man got going. 

Solas moved quickly to the tavern as the most likely source of information. Inside, the barmaid was doing a brisk trade in ale, and too busy to spare time for him, even when he began piling coins on the bar.

He couldn’t imagine Nue drinking in this tavern after their last misadventure, so he accepted the brush off more gracefully than he was inclined to and looked instead for a messenger, a peddler, someone who might have travelled more widely in the camp. He scanned the crowd. 

A dwarf was seated in the center of the tavern, looking for someone to buy his next ale, so Solas took the one the barmaid had exchanged for too many coins and put it in front of the muscular, auburn-haired man.

“Ah, a new friend!” the dwarf said contentedly, sizing him up. “Take a seat, tell me a story I haven’t heard yet.” 

“I am in a hurry,” Solas replied, not sitting down. “I am looking for someone here for the Conclave. Are you familiar with the camp?”

The man stroked his bare chin. “I suppose I do know a number of the major players. What can I tell you?”

Solas shook his head. Nue had no reason at all to mix with the Divine or the human powers conferring here. He didn’t even properly understand why her clan would care what happened here--he supposed if they were looking to adopt more mages or dodge more templars, the ultimate result of the Conclave might have some relevance for their lives in the Free Marches.. 

“Not a major player. A Dalish woman. Have you seen one?” 

“Sure, I’ve seen plenty of Dalish women. I can’t say whether I’ve seen yours, though. Describe her to me?” 

Tall, yellow vallaslin, halla--Solas attempted the feat. None of the words seemed to do her justice. Possibly he seemed a little distraught as he described her braids and the color of her hair, and the dwarf’s expression softened as Solas spoke on. 

Nue didn’t like shems; this was a fool’s errand. He ought to go find more elves to interrogate. 

The dwarf twisted the side of his mouth in sympathy. “I haven’t seen anyone like that. But I’ll keep an eye out for you.” 

Solas’ eyes fell on the stack of paper in front of the dwarf, who appeared to be working on a manuscript. One page had been discarded and crossed through. Solas turned it over; the back had not been used.

“If I may?” he asked, wishing he didn’t sound so pathetic. 

The dwarf inclined his head, and Solas took his pen to quickly sketch Nue from memory in three-quarter profile. 

“If you are going up the mountain, would you mind asking around?” Solas asked, handing the man the sketch. 

The dwarf pocketed the drawing. “Sure, I’m supposed to go up tomorrow afternoon,” he replied. “If I see her, what do I tell her?”

“Come back down the mountain. I’m here looking for her,” Solas said, heart clenching in his chest. He did not dare go up himself until he had better information on the timing of Corypheus’ plans to unlock his orb. 

His agents had reported that Corypheus was headed to the Conclave. Corypheus had to be seeking the Divine and the heads of the Mage Rebellion and the Templar Order to execute a decapitating strike against those who might muster large forces to oppose him.

It was what Solas would have done. 

* * *

Felassan was nearly ready to topple over. He’d searched all afternoon and night, but nobody had seen a Dalish woman with yellow vallaslin. He thought he’d spoken to most, if not all, of the elves in the camp. 

By the time it was morning, Fen’Harel seemed to have come to the same conclusion, because he seemed calmer when he ordered Felassan to keep asking around while he “searched the Fade”--likely a convenient excuse to get a little sleep while Felassan staggered around, trying not to pass out on his feet. Fen’Harel muttered the possibility that this unidentified ‘she’ was headed to Edgehall or Orzammar instead, and then rolled himself in his cloak to enjoy the sleep Felassan coveted. 

Felassan had to remind himself how sweet it was to be alive and not dead as he padded along the tracks he had already explored in Haven. It was not _that_ large of a place. He strayed off the path and into the woods, wondering if Fen’Harel would catch him napping if he were quick about it and did not enter the Fade. He saw some very comfortable-looking snowdrifts, and he eyed them contemplatively. He decided to search for Fen’Harel’s Dalish agent deeper in the quiet forest. 

As he wandered farther away from camp, though, he heard the squeals of children from deeper in the trees. He had not yet seen any children in the camp, and so he followed tiny footprints a hundred yards into the forest to a sheltered larch grove. 

Three human children were feeding long strands of dead grass to a pampered white halla, which reclined regally in the center of the little hollow, daintily nibbling their offerings. Aha! Finally, some sign of Fen’Harel’s mystery woman. 

As Felassan approached, the three children shot to their feet and shrank together fearfully at the sight of the tall, unfamiliar elf. None could have been more than ten years old. They eyed his vallaslin and robes suspiciously. 

Felassan halted and held up his hands, palms extended. “Oh, excuse me for bothering you,” he said in his gentlest voice. “I just heard the halla, and I came to see what had made her so happy.”

The tallest one pursed his lips as though considering a scream for help, but the next youngest couldn’t help arguing with Felassan’s statement. 

“She didn’t make any noises,” the little girl objected. “You couldn’t have heard her.” 

Felassan tapped the point of one of his ears. “Ah, but that is where you are wrong! My ears are very large, so they can hear the quietest little language of the halla. I heard that this one was enjoying herself very much.”

The three children digested this extravagant lie. 

“She likes grass,” the smallest child whispered, quickly shushed by the eldest. 

“She does indeed,” Felassan replied with a smile. “Tell me, does this halla have another friend? An elf like me?” He pointed at his forehead. 

The eldest one finally spoke. “She said we could play with her. We weren’t going to steal the halla. We’re just keeping her company until she gets back.” 

“Of course,” Felassan said, heart rate kicking up. He ought to interrogate the children closely so that Fen’Harel didn’t feel the need to come back and finish the job. “Do you know where she went? The halla’s friend?”

The youngest child turned and pointed up the mountain.

“Oh,” Felassan said. A certain ancient demigod was going to be happy to hear that. So close! “Are you sure?”

The middle child nodded. “She said she’ll be back tonight.”

* * *

Shems were dumb. It was hard to understand how it was that shems owned the entire sunlit world when they made so few efforts to hold onto it. Not a single person had stopped to interrogate Ellana as she wandered freely around the Temple of Sacred Ashes, even though a Dalish woman in vallaslin obviously had no business at the mage and Templar peace talks. Theoretical peace talks. Nobody was talking to each other: all the mages and Templars were shut up in little rooms talking with their own kind, leaving Ellana to walk aimlessly around and interrogate the stragglers about the progress of negotiations. Nobody thought they were making progress.

Ellana considered feeling sorry for herself, then rejected the impulse. If she were home, she’d likely be carving arrows and mending fishnets while on guard at the camp perimeter. She was inside and out of the weather, at least. People had left a lot of buffet tables out to feed the various guests; she had helped herself. The kids that morning had been cute and had not thrown stones at her; perhaps she was making friends. 

She took a left down a wide, stone corridor, deciding to steal something to make the day a truly worthwhile one. 

* * *

Solas woke himself up with a huge expenditure of effort, despite passing less than an hour asleep out of the previous two days. He’d been to the mountain summit in the Fade. The magister was there. The magister was already at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. None of the spirits there watching the Conclave had noticed a Dalish woman, but she was of such unimportance to the great scheme of the world that she might have easily gone unremarked. The spirits were all too focused on the darkspawn magister, eager to see what he would do.

He would unlock Solas’ orb and thereby perish--along with every other person on the mountain. 

Solas stared up at the summit, wracked with indecision. Wherever Corypheus unlocked his orb, there would be destruction. The sooner he did so, the sooner that Solas could retrieve his focus and begin the process of repairing the world. 

And yet...where else could Nue have been going? She said she wanted to understand how and why the world was changing. That had to mean the Conclave. 

It was not safe. The magister was already at the Conclave. Indecision pinned him to the spot. 

He heard Felassan leadenly jog up behind him. The man had not yet proven useful at all. Solas had probably been foolish to bring him along. He ought to just cut the man loose and tell him to enjoy Orlais. Foolish sentimentality and fear of being alone with his own regrets were all that had compelled him to bring him in the first place. 

“So, I found your lady,” Felassan announced, making Solas whip his head around. “Or her halla, at least. Some kids said she went up to the summit.” His tone expected congratulations. He smiled in relief, pleased to have been of service. 

Instead, Solas looked up at the mountain as his mouth fell open in horror. 

That familiar chorus of _what did you do what have I done what did you do_ swamped all other conscious thoughts. 

He did not listen for Felassan as panic spurred his feet into a sprint due north for the mountain trail. The thin air burned in his lungs as badly as it had on the days when he’d been Nue’s patient. His muscles ached as he urged them faster, harder up the path. There were no spells for this, not anymore. There was nothing more he could do than the merest mortal man--just run upward, and hope he was not too late. No mortal man had ever made as many mistakes as him. 

Solas did not know if Felassan was following him, but when the explosion knocked him off his feet and sent him tumbling down the mountain, he thought he heard the other man scream too. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ready for you to take my hand, wreck my plans, that's my man

Felassan finished setting a Templar’s broken foot and stood up, rubbing his aching lower back. The only sleep he’d gotten had been while unconscious, and it had only been early afternoon when he woke back up from his sleeping position in a sheltering patch of dead ferns to find a rage demon eyeing Fen’Harel’s prone form with a view to lunch. 

There had been a tiny, nearly infinitesimal moment where Felassan thought, ‘Have at him, big guy.’ While he considered that he owed his vastly unpleasant personal circumstances--wounded on the side of a burning mountain, a great hole in the Veil spewing demons into the waking world, working for a cause he no longer really believed in--entirely to one elf who had never been quite as clever as he thought, Felassan ultimately hit the rage demon with a lightning bolt to the torso, cast a few crude healing spells upon himself and Fen’Harel, and then carried the man back down the mountain and into the chaotic camp of Haven. 

Fen’Harel’s head wound was more gory and superficial than alarming, but the unconsciousness was a little concerning. That did not mean that Felassan could not enjoy the opportunity to take stock of circumstances without being yelled at. The giant hole in the Veil presumably meant that the magister had succeeded in opening Fen’Harel’s orb. Well, too bad for him and for everyone else up at the summit. Too bad, presumably, for Fen’Harel’s Dalish agent. That was likely to put him in a terrible mood when he woke up, and so Felassan went up to the edge of the blast area to take a look for himself. Nothing but melted rock and demons. 

He went back down the mountain and dawdled outside the cabins, healing the few survivors who had made it back down into camp. Nobody seemed to be in charge down at the base, with various lower-ranking officers alternatively attempting to organize a retreat and to organize a party to go up and investigate the still-smoking hole where the Temple of Sacred Ashes had been. 

When he could not put it off any longer, Felassan went back into the cabin he had appropriated for Fen’Harel’s recuperation--it appeared to belong to a group of Chantry officials, so they would not be back for it--and checked the man’s vitals. His pulse was strong in his wrist, and his breathing was regular. He’d be fine, Felassan thought, striving not to begrudge the man his ready escape from every predicament he brought upon himself. 

Indeed, a moment later, Fen’Harel shook himself awake and immediately attempted to stand and return to what he’d been doing before hitting his head against the mountain. Running headlong up it. 

“You have a concussion,” Felassan told him, sticking out a leg to block the path to the door. “You need to sit back down.” 

“I need to get back up to the summit,” Fen’Harel snapped at him, looking for his staff where Felassan had hidden it under the bed.

Felassan sighed. “It’s gone. The magister must have unlocked the orb. There’s a giant hole in the Veil, and demons are pouring through it. Most of the people here are fleeing.”

This did not dissuade Fen’Harel. “I have to go,” he repeated. 

“Fen’Harel,” Felassan said patiently. It had no effect on the man’s frantic efforts to re-dress and pack. “I have been up there. It’s melted to the bedrock. The orb isn’t there.” 

The man was not crediting his words, but his face grew paler. His hands shook wildly on the catches of his tunic.

Felassan thought hard about whether he wanted to be the one to tell Fen’Harel for the second time in a week that Fen’Harel couldn’t do what he wanted to do. That was not a good plan in terms of Felassan’s own personal health. Still, the wretchedness of the other elf’s expression provoked a little pity.

“ _Solas_ ,” he said insistently, trying a name that he hadn’t used since before Mythal’s murder. “Nobody closer to the top than us survived. Your agent--” His friend, Felassan suddenly perceived, “--she’s gone. I’m sorry.” 

And he _was_ sorry, because those were the words that finally got through. Fen’Harel sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, his hands falling from the half-buttoned clasps on his shirt. His face was a mask of horror. Felassan wished the expression were not so familiar there. 

Felassan went to the door so that the man could have a little privacy with his feelings. 

“Why don’t you rest and search the Fade, see if you can figure out what happened,” Felassan said kindly. “I’ll let you know if the perimeter changes at all, and I’ll keep my eyes and ears open for news.” 

Fen’Harel barely seemed to acknowledge Felassan’s words, but he finally lay back down on the bed. Felassan quickly shut the door behind him while he could still plausibly deny that he’d ever seen the Dread Wolf, He Who Hunts Alone, the Great Betrayer, curl in on himself and cry. 

* * *

Ellana hated spiders. _Hated_ them. Her least-favorite cousin had thought it was funny to put them in her mittens when they were teenagers. She had not cried very much when he was eaten by a bear some years later. 

“Lady,” Ellan told the old woman in the funny hat that she was half-supporting, half-carrying, “I want to bring you out of this place too, but you are going to need to keep up a better pace if we are going to keep ahead of the spiders.”

“Leave me behind, child,” the Divine gasped. “Save yourself.” 

Ellana scowled at that ludicrous advice. Shems had absurdly low expectations of each other. Leave an old lady behind to save herself, indeed.

“We are going to walk _faster_ ,” she told the woman in her most brightly encouraging voice. 

Ellana picked up a rock, planning to throw it at the spiders if it came to that. 

* * *

The Fade was a barren wasteland. All spirits had fled, save those tormented into insanity by the effects of the Breach. Solas approached the center from the Fade, feeling the chaotic energies streaming out of the world that dreamed and into the one that woke. 

There was no trace of what had happened. No record preserved of the last moments of all those present at the Conclave. The only trace of Nue’s life might reside in Solas’ own memories. 

He fell to his knees in the swirling void and cursed himself, looking on all he had wrought. 

* * *

“You there, mage,” a dark-haired human snapped at Felassan in strong Nevarran accents. “Are you a healer?”

Felassan had a staff on his back and his fingers inside the knee of a wailing Chantry soldier as he knit the man’s ligaments into position.

He gave a significant look at his hand, where blue healing energies swirled into tissue regrowth. He finished the spell and tied it off, patting the wheezing human’s leg. 

“Who, me?” Felassan asked innocently.

The woman made a disgusted noise. “Come with me, then,” she ordered curtly, no smile on her attractive face. Nobody else ever seemed to think Felassan was as funny as he knew he was.

The woman was a Seeker, by her armor, so Felassan decided that discretion indicated his compliance. He followed her into the Chantry and then down a set of stairs. 

He would have been alarmed when he noticed that they were headed to the dungeon, but he saw a knot of soldiers down the corridor ahead carrying a limp body among them. They dropped it on the floor when they saw the Seeker approach with Felassan. 

A fair-skinned woman in a lavender hood brought over a set of shackles and bound the prisoner’s hands before allowing Felassan to approach. 

They all gathered around the limp figure on the floor. 

It was an elven woman--tall, Andruil’s vallaslin, crude leather armor. Her long braids were tangled around her unconscious face. Oh, more good news for Fen’Harel, Felassan thought. He had found the agent-- _again_ \--and she was alive, kind of. Possibly not for long. There was whatever had made her unconscious and then also those morally dubious suicide-on-capture rules, once she woke up. 

“She seems to be dying,” the Seeker said, not very torn up about this eventuality. “But we’d prefer she live long enough to be questioned, at least. Can you manage that?”

Felassan looked over the woman’s form. She did not have any visible injuries. He took off his cloak and wadded it behind her head to get a better look at her. Reasonably pretty, actually. Probably even more so when not actively dying. 

Felassan managed to feel a little put out about that potential reason for why Fen’Harel had been so concerned about this agent when he did nothing but order Felassan around and consider killing him. Shallow, that’s what the Dread Wolf was. 

Her respiration was sluggish and her pulse rapid, but she wasn’t bleeding anywhere, and Felassan couldn’t feel any head injuries when he patted her down under her hair. 

“Perhaps you ought to look first at that mark on her hand,” the purple-hooded woman suggested in chilly Orlesian tones. 

‘Hand’ was usually the last part of the body that a healer checked for lethal injuries, but Felassan humored the heavily-armed women by pulling off the prisoner’s gloves. 

Bright green energy swirled forth and knocked Felassan on his ass. 

“Elgar’nan’s balls,” he swore, scrambling to sit back up. The last time he’d seen anything like that, Fen’Harel had been knocking Arlathan out of the sky. The prisoner moaned pitifully, her body poorly-suited to channel the primordial energies of the Fade. 

“Do you know what it is?” the Seeker demanded.

Felassan shook his head. This had never been his department. “Something connected with the Fade,” he temporized. “I don’t know.” 

He paused under the scrutiny of the two women. 

“But come to think of it,” he followed, considering his options, “I met a fellow down at the base camp yesterday. He said he was quite the expert on the Fade. Perhaps we could get him up here to give his opinion?” 

* * *

Solas ignored Felassan’s confused glare once they were finally alone with Nue in the Haven dungeons. 

“Help me cast the wards,” Solas curtly instructed. “Ward for everything.” Energies that might escape the Anchor, certainly--but also sight, sound, magical eavesdropping. 

Felassan’s jaw clenched, but he complied, walling off the dungeon cell from the rest of the world.

As soon as it was done, Solas dove for Nue’s crumpled form, lifting her into his arms as he knelt on the cold stone of the floor. She was too cold and still. Nue had been warmth and comfort and movement. This body on the floor only looked like her. 

“You know, I never thought I’d be the one to say this to _you_ , but you could stand to be a little smarter about this,” Felassan complained. “You were not very subtle about throwing everyone else out.” 

The armed humans who had put Nue in a dungeon could go to the Void, for all Solas cared. He propped her head back against his chest so that he could support her body as he looked at what his Anchor had done to her. 

It was dug in deep to her hand. He prodded at it with a few strands of energy, but they vanished into the Fade. He couldn’t even get a hold on it. It was voracious, pulling together the waking world and the Fade, stealing energy out of her body when it could not satisfy itself with the forces around it. He had not the faintest idea how she’d come to bear it. A matter that could bear more inquiry once he’d gotten her somewhere safe. 

“How many soldiers are between us and the exit?” Solas asked, trying to recall. 

Felassan frowned. “That is a strange thing to be curious about,” he said. “More soldiers outside than birds in a tree. More than fit in a breadbox. More than enough to kill three stupid, tired elves, one of whom is unconscious and needs more healing.” 

Solas bared his teeth in a scowl. “If you will carry her, I will dispense with the humans myself.” 

Felassan put a hand over his forehead, rubbing it in small circles.

“They think she killed the Divine and blew up the entire Conclave! They are not going to let you walk out with her. What are you even trying to do?” Felassan asked incredulously.

The idea that Felassan, who had cheerfully gone along with Solas’ plan to overthrow a group of immortal mage-kings, would now serve as the voice of restraint was ludicrous. 

“The Anchor will kill her,” Solas said shortly. “It needs to be warded. She shouldn’t be sleeping on the floor.” He paused, and his next words stuck in his throat. “This is _my_ fault.” 

Felassan didn’t understand that. “Why, just because you sent her here? You couldn’t have known--”

“No,” Solas said hoarsely. “I did not send her here. She came only to see what happened at the Conclave. I gave the orders to let the magister find my orb. The explosion was...larger than expected.” 

Felassan blinked for a long minute as he processed that, then gave a very long, tired exhale in response. 

“Well,” he said, suddenly sounding as old as they both were. “This really is quite the fuck up, then, isn’t it?” 

Solas wrapped his arms further around Nue’s unconscious body and buried his face in her dusty-smelling hair. How could it have possibly come to this? She had not even wanted to know his plans. 

“Okay,” Felassan muttered when Solas did not come up with one of his typically foolproof schemes. “Okay, here is what we are going to do. You are not going to kill anyone. You are going to ward her hand until she wakes up. You are not going to tell anyone that you know her or me. When I see an opportunity to get her out, I will get her out. You--” He gave a very stern look at Solas, “--you will figure out how to fix the giant hole you made in the Veil before it destroys both worlds. Okay?”

“Ma nuvenin,” Solas muttered, reaching for Nue’s hand again. “Get her out and get her far away from here.” 

* * *

When Ellana woke up, she immediately decided that it was time for her to quit drinking. She didn’t remember getting drunk, but she couldn’t think of a different reason that she’d be waking up on the floor in someone else’s cloak. 

“Careful, careful,” an unfamiliar male voice instructed as she pushed herself into a seated position and opened cracked, gummy eyes to peer up at a handsome Dalish man with a concerned expression on his angular, brown-skinned face. He blinked at her with pansy-purple eyes as he swam in and out of focus. 

He looked like the kind of mistake she was prone to making while drunk, but surely she had not gotten so drunk that she couldn’t remember even starting to drink. The last thing she could remember was raiding a buffet table in the Temple, and then...it was very fuzzy. 

The sound of longswords clearing their scabbards had her jolting to scan for the other figures in the room. It appeared that she had made a very different kind of mistake. Four armed humans seemed rather excessive when staying upright felt like the limits of Ellana’s personal capabilities. 

“Aneth ara,” the Dalish man told her cheerfully. “You are about to meet some people who would like to kill you. I’m Felassan. I would prefer that they do not.”

He waited as though expecting praise for this sensible position. 

“Why am I in a dungeon?” Ellana asked instead.

He pursed his lips and nodded as though that were a very good question. “They think you blew up the Conclave.”

Oh. Well, Ellana felt like she might have been in something that blew up.

“I didn’t,” she insisted, a little light-headed. 

“I was almost positive that you would say that,” Felassan told her. “Problematically, everyone except you is dead, and you have that thing on your hand that looks very capable of blowing things up.” 

They both looked at the Mark. 

“I’m very positive that I wouldn’t blow something up, but I can’t remember what this is or how I got here,” Ellana confided, because the four armed humans were only watching while they spoke. 

The heavy, barred door to the dungeon was kicked open, and two more angry humans entered the room. 

“Well,” Felassan said, “If you’re feeling up to it, perhaps we might all go outside and see if that Mark might put things back together instead?”

* * *

It wasn’t hard to see what Fen’Harel saw in her. Even if he’d been typically close-mouthed about the exact nature of their relationship, Felassan had a couple of guesses at the emotions that had left the Great Betrayer cuddling the unconscious woman while looking like he planned to cry again. 

Ellana, or Nue, or whatever her exact name was (she and Fen’Harel had given different accounts), was winning Cassandra over as they made their way up the mountain, and Felassan was reluctantly impressed too. 

He was not sure that he would have transitioned from “shackled in a dungeon” to “shooting demons with arrows” quite as fast as Ellana had. It was almost a shame that they were to be of such limited acquaintance. 

Felassan waited until Cassandra had run on ahead to engage a cluster of angry wisps, and then he grabbed Ellana by the unmarked wrist.

“Now is your chance,” he murmured quickly. Ellana skidded to a halt, looking at him in consternation. “Run down the hill and look for a fallen beech tree on your left. There’s a hidden trail back to Haven. I left you some supplies by your halla--she’s where you left her. Don’t go into any human settlements before you get to Gwaren. Someone will contact you back at your clan.” 

“But--” Ellana appeared to understand, but she gestured at Cassandra, still whacking away at the demons.

Felassan rolled his eyes. “Oh, don’t worry about her, she’s very good with that sword. Get yourself out of here. We’ll catch up before your hand kills you.” 

“Lethallin, thanks, but who is ‘we’?” Ellana hissed under her breath, sending one arrow sailing down at the demons just to appear as though she were still urgently fighting with the Seeker.

Felassan realized that that might not be obvious. He wondered what Fen’Harel had told her. Surely not much. 

“Mutual friend,” he said. “Another mage? Elf?”

Ellana’s expression was still blank. 

Felassan hesitated as he searched for descriptors other than “dread.” 

“Bald?” 

Her expression cleared. 

“Blue Eyes?” she gasped. Her cheeks reddened. She amended her answer, which Felassan tucked away for use in taunting if he ever got the impression that Fen’Harel wanted to kill him again. “Solas? What is he _doing_ here?”

Felassan cast a barrier over Cassandra, who was still determinedly stabbing barely-corporeal spirits. “Trying to fix the Breach,” he said, pointing up the mountain with his staff. 

Ellana’s breath caught in her throat. “Oh! That idiot!” 

Her upper lip curled. She lifted her bow and sent a quick flurry of arrows into the remaining spirits. 

Felassan could not bring himself to disagree. He thought it was very unlikely that Fen’Harel would be able to close the Breach without the Anchor, but he was sympathetic to his interest in getting Ellana out of the mess he had created. 

“Ellana,” Felassan quickly advised as the last wisp dissipated. “If you’re going, it needs to be now.” 

He cast a barrier over himself. He was going to have to delay the Seeker a bit at that point, and the woman was now looking up at them very suspiciously. 

“Ellana,” he repeated, more urgently. 

The Dalish woman put her longbow over her shoulder.

“Bl-- _Solas_ can barely light dry sticks on fire with his magic,” she confided to Felassan, who in turn barely kept his face straight. “He can’t close a big hole in the sky! Come on.”

And then she waved at Cassandra and strode briskly down the rise, determination in every line of her body. 

* * *

Solas froze another rage demon, then had to lean on his staff to take a breather. He ought to have studied the magics of fire and lightning. Or of healing and protection. The mysteries of the Fade were of limited utility in his life, except in causing ever-greater disasters. 

“You holding up okay there, Chuckles?” the dwarf inquired, loading more bolts into his crossbow. 

“Certainly, Master Tethras,” he said dismissively. 

He ought to be more solicitous of the dwarf, who had been kind enough so far to not mention to the Seeker that Solas and the prisoner were of prior acquaintance. Solas was certain that there would be some kind of favor or threat forthcoming, but that was for a time after Felassan had gotten Nue out of the dungeon and safely away. 

The tiny rift they guarded spat forth another couple of demons. Solas’ heart ached as he imagined what they might have been before: passion, maybe, or diligence. Once twisted by the rift, they emerged as rage. All his efforts to close even the tiniest rifts had failed; energy slipped through the holes in the Veil faster or slower, but it always went. 

Solas sighed and sent another bolt of energy at the nearest, blocking its blow with his staff. 

An arrow whistled past his ear, and he prepared to wheel on Varric to reprimand him for the close call, but Varric was looking past Solas, to the top of the rise. 

Solas followed his line of sight until his breath stuttered in his chest.

Nue stood atop the retaining wall, her longbow drawn. She smiled at him broadly, showing all her white teeth. She looked no different than the last time he saw her in the woods north of Honnleath. 

Felassan gave Solas a guilty look and lifted a palm to spray the remaining demons with a web of lightning. When the demons were smoking rags on the ground, Nue made an admiring comment to Felassan and hopped down from the wall, striding over to the rift. 

“So!” she asked. “Haven’t got it shut yet?”

As Solas gathered himself to respond intelligently to that inquiry, explain himself, throw himself at her feet to ask for forgiveness, yell at Felassan for being unable to complete a single task to which Solas had set him--

Ellana lifted a hand to poke directly at the rift. Her left hand. 

It resonated with the rift, energy traveling back and forth between the Anchor and the Fade, the transaction vibrating faster and faster until--

“Ouch!” Ellana said, shaking her hand out. And then she grinned as the rift dissipated. 

She looked over at Solas, her expression no more than mildly surprised, a ‘gee-wasn’t-that-a-thing’ kind of wonder, like she had just seen a hawk snatch a pigeon in midair. How _exciting_ that she had just made herself indispensable to a human holy war. 

She approached him, mouth opening to greet him, perhaps even demand answers--

He stuck his hand out, palm facing in. 

“I am Solas,” he informed her. “Pleased to meet you.” 

She was terrible at subterfuge. She blinked, frowned, and tilted her head, all before she reluctantly took his hand.

“Ellana Lavellan,” she drawled. She squeezed his hand just a little too hard. 

Varric was looking between the two of them with a nervous, delighted expression on his face. Solas got the impression that he was taking voluminous mental notes.

The Seeker and Felassan jumped down off the wall to investigate the remains of the rift. Cassandra kicked the pile of ashes and nodded at Felassan in thanks.

“You told us,” Cassandra said coolly, turning to Solas, “that the prisoner’s Mark was unlikely to be of any direct use on the rifts.” 

This was not precisely true: what Solas had said was that ‘there was no reason for them to believe that the prisoner’s mark could be used directly on the rifts.’ And that _was_ true, because they were a lot of ignorant human religious fanatics, not magical theorists. Solas had always believed that the Mark could shut the rifts. He simply did not want that to be Nue’s fate. 

“I am very pleased in this instance to be wrong,” Solas said, heart quickening. He’d been trying to buy Nue more time, informing Cassandra and Leliana that a great deal of magical energy would be needed to close the Breach, far more than was contained in the Anchor. He still thought it might take a year to gather the lyrium and personnel necessary. It might take his orb. There was no reason for Nue to suffer that entire time. She was one Dalish hunter. This was not her mistake to fix. 

“It’s okay,” Nue reassured him, punching him awkwardly in the shoulder. “I’ve got it now.” 

This was going to be a disaster. He was going to end up carving their way out past hundreds of armed humans while the demons poured out behind them. 

“This is everyone’s first catastrophe. We’re learning as we go!” Nue sent a winning smile at Cassandra. “Let’s try a bigger one next.” 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW

The ale wasn’t very good, but there was a lot of it. Everyone in the tavern wanted to buy Felassan a drink and shake his hand. This was a circumstance so unfamiliar as to be nearly intoxicating on its own. Felassan could vaguely remember good times, very long past: parties in Mythal’s court, certain banquets that had been heavy on the magical delights and low on blood sport. It was so remote from the other Ages of his life that sometimes it felt as though it had happened to a different person. 

“The man of the hour!” Varric Tethras announced, coming in out of the evening cold and claiming a seat at the table near Felassan. 

Felassan slid one of his drinks to the dwarf and tipped his mug at him in acknowledgement. 

“I would think that is Messere Lavellan,” he pointed out. “She is the one who stabliized the Breach, after all.”

Varric grinned. “Well, first off, she’s a lady, and second, I think she’s going to claim more than an hour. An Age, maybe. But you! You blew up a demon as big as a house. You get to be the hero for tonight, at least until something bigger and uglier attacks us.”

Felassan imagined that he had looked fairly dashing when he tossed a fireball straight down the gullet of that last pride demon. At the time, he’d simply been very tired of demons, being awake, and worrying about what Fen’Harel was going to think of Felassan’s failure to evacuate his girlfriend. 

Ellana was a crack shot with that longbow of hers, and the Seeker just as handy with a sword as all her kind, but Fen’Harel had focused all his efforts on wrapping Ellana in wards, and Felassan had not possessed the patience for an extended battle with the last demon standing between their group and the largest tear in the Veil. So he had foregone discretion and poured all his remaining energies into a big, nasty shot of fire. 

The demon had exploded beautifully and rained Fade-stuff and viscera mostly onto other people. As good a day as Felassan had enjoyed in a string of bad ones. 

So while the main credit for the day went to Ellana, who did important things like fall out of the Fade and close rifts, everyone except Fen’Harel was very pleased with Felassan. And Felassan hadn’t seen Fen’Harel since they all came back to camp, Ellana slung over the Seeker’s shoulder and Fen’Harel glaring daggers at the back of her head as though he thought the Seeker might drop her. 

Being generally admired and left to his own devices was a nice change of pace for Felassan. 

“So, how do you know the other elves?” Varric artlessly inquired. 

Felassan was practiced at evasion. “What makes you think we know each other? Awful presumption, assuming all elves know each other. Sometimes, we don’t even get along.” 

Felassan was drunk.

Varric squinted at him and leaned in. “I am well aware that elves do not always get along with each other. But while I am the last person to pry into the affairs of another--” here he pressed a hand to his fuzzy chest, “--you should know that Sister Leliana was asking around about the three of you. So you might want to get your stories straight on that.” 

The fuzz of alcohol made it difficult to focus on the dwarf.

“What did you tell her?” Felassan managed to ask.

Varric scoffed. “Do I look like someone who rats to the Chantry? I didn’t tell her anything. Whatever you guys were doing here, that’s your business. Just a bit of friendly advice.” 

Felassan took another swig of the ale, nodding at that faint assurance. 

Varric raised his eyebrows at him. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to know what the story is. Tragic love triangle? She’s your sister, you’re trying to prevent their wedding? You promised her mother you would always keep her safe, but she’s taking up with a scoundrel?” 

“Why aren’t I the romantic hero in any of these?” Felassan complained. “Perhaps my clanmate and I are united in fighting the forces of darkness, and Solas owes me a life debt because I saved his life in a war.” 

Varric pursed his lips. “Yeah, if you’re trying to sell any other narrative, you might want to tell your buddy to work on his face. I can’t believe anyone would think he’s here for anyone but the girl.” 

* * *

Solas led Vherlen around the back of the cabin now allotted to Nue in her new role as a human religious figure and poured out a sack of grain on the ground. 

“Stay,” he told the animal in Common, and then in Elvhen for good measure. The halla ignored him, as it was prone to do. It had taken him the better part of an hour to convince it to follow him: he had brought the sack of grain with him, but Vherlen shied away from him when he approached with a looped rope. Three human children had silently watched him chase the halla in circles until he gave up and prepared to lift the creature with magic and thereby convey it back to Nue’s cabin, only then informing him then that Vherlen would follow him for apple slices. 

“Do you have any apples?” the youngest asked hopefully. 

He had been thereafter obliged to buy four apples off the profiteering camp provisioner. Only then, much later than he had planned, did he succeed in gathering the supplies Felassan had left for Nue and leading her halla away from the edge of camp. 

No guards stopped him as he approached her cabin: he supposed that an elf carrying a pack and leading a halla was so stereotypical as to be invisible to humans, tucking that information away for later. Once the halla was secured where the Chantry leaders would not suspect an abandoned plan to escape, Solas checked the windows until he found one unlocked. 

He climbed through it, his arm and abdominal muscles shouting at him. He had not had to personally fight for his life for some Ages, and walking across Thedas required different muscle groups than fighting demons--or climbing through the windows of sleeping women. It had been even longer since he’d had a reason to do that. He closed and bolted the shutters behind him, checking the lock on the front door as well. 

Nue was laid out on a large bed in the corner of the cabin’s main room, probably the best one that this benighted hamlet boasted, which was not saying much. Someone had taken off her armor and washed off her face, but her hair was still straggling out of its neat braids. She slept uneasily, tossing and turning, but that was preferable to her frightening stillness of the days before.

Nonetheless, Solas checked the wards on her Marked hand first: Felassan had done a reasonable job, but Solas replaced and strengthened them. He frowned down at her hand. He could not think of any method of removing it that would leave her hand intact, but the Mark would continue to draw on her until he removed the Veil. He had planned on doing that within the month, but without any idea of where his orb had gone or any lead on the location of a different focus, Nue was bound to suffer indefinitely. 

“Ir abelas,” he whispered, brushing a strand of hair off her face. She immediately rolled over to trap his hand under her head, muttering grumpily. Nue wasn’t used to sleeping in a bed. He’d left her bedroll outside with the halla, though, so he couldn’t help shift her to the floor, where she might have been more comfortable. 

After a moment’s thought, he sat down on the head of the bed, pulling her up the next time she rolled over so that her head rested across his knees. She was more used to sleeping on top of him than on a pillow, anyway. He leaned back against the wall, telling himself that he would just check in with his nearest agent and be awake again before Nue was. 

He managed to locate two of his Fereldan agents and tell them to come to Haven. Neither had any information on the potential location of the orb, and he would likely need additional assistance to get himself and Nue free of the human Chantry. He was preparing to check on Felassan when he was ripped free of the Fade. 

It was very dark in the interior of the cabin, most of the light spilling out of Nue’s Mark as she roughly patted at his face to ascertain his identity. She managed to smash him in the nose with her palm before her other hand brushed his bare scalp. 

Only then did she relax back across his lap. Solas tried not to feel aggrieved that she’d only known who he was because he was bald. 

“Creators, Blue Eyes, you should have _said_ something,” Nue complained. “I’m getting tired of waking up in places where I didn’t go to sleep.” 

“Ir abelas,” he repeated, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “I did not mean to sleep so long.” He did not think it was dawn yet, but he should not blame her for being jumpy in this unfamiliar environment. 

Nue fisted his shirt and tugged him down until he was lying next to her, arranging him into a comfortable position with their stomachs brushing and her hand resting on his elbow. 

“Is it safe?” she asked from a few inches away. 

That was a complicated question, with an equally complicated answer. He collected himself, preparing to explain their immediate circumstances, the implications of the Chantry’s interest in her, the rumors already beginning to swirl, his predictions for the long-term realignment of the powers in Thedas. He prepared a thoughtful answer. It would be a good framework to discuss how they would proceed until he could resolve the Breach. 

“For the moment, yes--”

He was cut off as soon as he got those words out. Nue kissed him, a hungry press of unwashed teeth and wind-chapped lips. He did his best to return the sentiments without drawing things out. He felt awake, at least. Awake and too aware of the fragility of the mortal body pressed against his own. 

Solas sighed as he broke the kiss off, because he hadn’t earned her affection, much less deserved it. He had things to tell her that she needed to know, and then she might decide that she didn’t feel like kissing him again. 

Nue only curled her hands into the knit fabric of his tunic and wormed herself closer to him. She kissed him again, mouth opening to curl her tongue against his, and Solas did not care nearly so much that she hadn’t brushed her teeth since spitting blood at a despair demon after a few moments of it. It was Nue, after all, and she still kissed like there was nothing she’d ever thought of before or after kissing him. 

Still there were things he needed to explain to her, choices he needed to make. 

“Nue,” he said, trying to speak past her tongue in his mouth, “You must have questions.” 

“Mmm, later,” she said, now pulling his shirt up out of his belt. 

He now recognized where this was headed--and very quickly, too. She was remarkably practiced at getting him out of his clothes from a supine position. 

“Nue,” he insisted. “A great deal has occurred!”

She stopped pulling at his clothes for long enough to narrow her eyes at him in the dark. 

“I _noticed._ ” She leaned in to kiss him again, bruisingly hard, like she was making a point of it. “I almost died a _lot_ today,” she growled into his ear. “It was _awful._ Now will you _please_ pull my hair and make me come?” 

When she said it like that, it sounded like a reasonable request. A normal response to everything she’d gone through. And it was a pleasant change of pace to be asked for something he could provide. Thought he could provide, anyway, if Nue would let him gather himself and would stop groping him in the process of pulling his clothes off. 

She kicked both their trousers down to their ankles, apparently considering that the necessary amount of nudity, hands reaching to cup him intimately. Nue handled his cock like she did her longbow--carefully but not very respectfully, with more familiarity than curiosity. 

She batted away his attempts at anything like foreplay, and Solas would have objected if he didn’t know from experience that protesting would only lead to being flipped on his back and ridden like a recalcitrant halla. 

“Nue,” he coughed in reluctant amusement as she maneuvered him on top of her. “I promise, I will--” 

She sank her teeth into his shoulder as she thrust her hips up at him imploringly, cunt skidding along the underside of his cock. She might have broken skin if he hadn’t still had his shirt on. 

He gritted his jaw and planted his forearms around her shoulders, using the leverage to grab her braids in his fists and bow her head back where he was safe from her teeth. 

“No biting,” he told her firmly as he finished kicking his trousers off his feet. Her expression was defiant. 

Keeping a grip on her hair, he pushed her muscular thighs apart with a knee and lowered his weight over her, letting her feel what she could have if she would only behave for a second. 

She gave him about five before rolling her hips against him in a demanding way, and he gave up the charade that he had any amount of self-control around her and pushed into her slick and welcoming body. 

He couldn’t offer any kind of finesse with the way she immediately wrapped her legs around him and dug her heels into his ass. Only enthusiasm, and that was less than productive toward the second of his two assignments. No chance he could wedge a hand between their two bodies with her arms holding his face to her neck and her legs around him. And with her breath hot in his ear and her body rocking against him, he had to think very hard about the eventual heat death of the universe so as not to disgrace himself. 

When he rocked forward, seeking a position that did not afford her quite so much freedom to slide along his cock, she moaned so loudly that he had to clap a hand over her mouth for fear of alerting the guards stationed at her front door. 

That proved to be the trick gaining some room to work. He arched his back and pulled his knees up until he knelt between her legs. 

“Can you be quiet?” he asked, hand still over her mouth as he thrust into her at a more steady rhythm. 

She wordlessly shook her head ‘no.’ 

Fine, then. He left his hand over her mouth and ground his hips against her rhythmically until her eyes watered and her body clenched around him in a shuddering release of all the fear and tension she must have accumulated since waking up in a dungeon. 

He sighed in relief as he felt her climax, pulling his hand away from her mouth. He leaned forward over her, barely chasing his own release beyond enjoying the contraction of her body around him. Nue craned her neck to sink her teeth into the knob of his throat, the shock of it causing him to jerk his hips forward and spill inside her. 

Solas grunted in surprise, having considered those old pain-pleasure channels to be long dormant. Nue laughed at his expression, reaching down to pat his ass affectionately, although he was still softening in her wet cunt. 

“Thanks, Blue Eyes,” she said warmly, and he was so dazed he nearly told her she was welcome. 

After a moment, he gathered his wits and moved off her, thinking that it was going to be a lot more difficult to explain the damage to the Veil, his need to repair it, and the potential impediments of international politics to her now with any kind of patience or authority when she probably wanted to go clean up and Solas needed to see if Felassan would heal what felt like tooth marks in his throat.

He could remind her that he was a scholar and a Dreamer, encourage her to start looking at the bigger picture, and guide her into a position of safety while he determined how best to address the Breach and the disappearance of the orb. Just as soon as he got his body back under control. It was always difficult to concentrate on the realities of his situation when pressed against Nue’s stubbornly tangible person. 

Nue took a deep breath and sat up, looking around the cabin. Solas’ heart was still beating a rapid tempo in his chest, but he rolled off the pillow long enough for Nue to pull the case off to use as a rag. 

She began dressing herself again, her expression more cheerful than it had been when he arrived. 

Solas put a palm over his forehead. “Truly, now, Nue, we should talk about what we are going to do.” 

“Okay,” she agreed, too easily. “Is the big hole in the sky fixed?”

“No, it is not fixed,” he sighed. “It is stable. If you would let me explain--” 

Nue nodded. “Yes. Let me get the mage for that, though. The Dalish one.” 

Solas frowned. “I do not see why--”

The front door rattled. They both froze. 

“Herald?” came a question from outside. “My lady Herald? Are you awake?”

“Are you supposed to be in here?” Nue whispered to Solas. 

He shook his head. Cassandra had not even wanted him near her, not that he’d given the Seeker a reason for his interest in the Dalish woman. 

Nue pointed at the window he’d come in through, and Solas gnashed his teeth as he went to it.

“Come find me as soon as you are free,” he told her as he unlatched the window and heaved himself over it again, afraid she was barely listening to him. “Do not promise them anything.” 

“Right,” Nue agreed with the air of a woman who was barely listening to him. She gave him a quick, sloppy kiss in the vicinity of his lips and pushed him over the windowsill. 

“Coming!” Nue shouted at the door. “What’s a Herald?”

* * *

Did they not have such impressively serious faces, Ellana would have said that the shems had been eating fly agaric mushrooms without boiling them first. She felt no particular nervousness about becoming a human religious figure, since human religion did not seem to place much responsibility on their gods. Their Maker and their Andraste were not expected to perform much in the way of miracles, so Nue was reasonably confident she could keep up that performance history. What was surprising was the confidence of the Chantry humans that Ellana on a less supernatural level could fix any of the problems that the humans had created for themselves.

They wanted Ellana to go into the Fereldan backcountry and wade into the interconnected snarl of religious disputes. It was not that Ellana was reluctant to head back east, but she suggested that if the solution of “why don’t you stop killing each other” had not yet occurred to the combatants, they might be too dim to appreciate that message even with Ellana’s newly-minted credentials brought to bear. The humans were confident that Ellana’s relationship with their gods would impress the unaligned powers in the region. 

Ellana tried to think of what the Keeper would want her to do. The mages and Templars gone amok were the reason Clan Lavellan had spared their best hunter to go to the Conclave, but the Keeper could not have expected that she would be gone so long. 

If she could actually do something to stop the fighting, she thought the clan would want her to do it. Refugees and bandits would strip the resources of the clan’s traditional territory. Desperate mages and Templars could threaten their safety.

On the other hand, she had no word yet how far the rifts had spread. If Ellana was the only one who could close rifts, shouldn’t she go close the ones nearest her clan?

She told the humans what they wanted to hear and then walked back down the hill from the Chantry, ruminating on whether she ought to gather Solas and potentially the Dalish mage and evacuate back to the Free Marches. Let the humans take care of the humans. 

She passed a cluster of tents, noting the bare feet of the Dalish mage sticking out past a canvas tent flap. She stopped and frowned, since no self-respecting Dalish would ever voluntarily fall asleep in such a shoddy structure. The dwarf, Varric Tethras, was sleeping in the next tent, his snores fighting for dominance with those of the mage. Ellana spied an empty whiskey bottle in the snow between the tents and assumed the cause of the hasty sleeping accommodations.

She kicked the sleeping mage’s ankle. 

“Oh, ir abelas!” she said brightly as he woke up in a startled flurry of movements and warding. “I tripped.” 

His dark head popped out of the tent flaps. He squinted up at her. Not suspiciously. Blearily. 

“Now that you’re awake, why don’t you come talk with me, lethallin,” Ellana said. “The humans think I’m a god, and they have some petitions.” 

* * *

Fen’Harel’s Trouble looked likely to live up to her name, dragging Felassan with her into the woods on the flimsy excuse of locating more healing herbs for the embattled camp at Haven. 

He had not had the opportunity to catch up with Fen’Harel since stabilizing the Breach, and while he had the excuse of being very drunk the night before, he didn’t even know whether Fen’Harel had looked for his report from the Fade. Going into the trees with the man’s paramour seemed like a poor continuation of his failings. 

Still, he couldn’t think of any reason to object, so he obediently followed her out past the last guard station, regretting his pounding head and wishing he’d learned the spells against hangovers. 

When they were out of eye and earshot of the camp, she turned to him with a serious look on her face. It was disconcerting to look into the eyes of someone wearing Andruil’s vallaslin. A slave would never have met the eyes of a priest like Felassan, and Andruil’s adherents had spent quite a long time trying to kill him. 

“First,” she said, “Are you alright? I assume so, in light of the drinking, but the shems aren’t giving you any trouble, are they?”

Felassan was unexpectedly gratified, because nobody ever asked him that. 

He nodded. “Nobody would dare say a thing to me inside of Haven on the outside chance that Andraste is favoring more elves than you.”

“Good,” she said with satisfaction. “If that changes, let me know, and I’ll have a holy vision or something.”

She cleared her throat, her expression growing sterner.

“Have you had a chance, in between the drinking and all, to figure out whether anything can be done about the Breach?” 

Felassan blinked, because that was decidedly not his department. 

“Ah, have you had a chance to speak to Solas again? He might have thoughts.” 

Her eyes narrowed. “I am asking you.” 

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Your Mark can probably close it if a great deal more power is brought to bear. Beyond that I don’t know.” 

Ellana nodded thoughtfully. “More than you have?”

He spread his palms. “I am just one mage. You would need many working together, I think. Or another source of power, such as the ancient elves used.” 

She continued nodding, slower and slower as she considered him. Felassan did not know why that made him so nervous. 

“You’re the friend he mentioned,” Ellana concluded. “Aren’t you? Looking for ancient artifacts. Solas worked for you before this.” 

Felassan froze in place, not sure whether to be shocked first and foremost by the idea that he was Fen’Harel’s friend, that Fen’Harel had informed the woman of some portion of his task, or that Fen’Harel worked for _him_.

“I really can’t say,” he temporized. “Did you talk to him about this?” 

Ellana frowned, her hand drifting down to rest on her belt knife. 

“I am sure,” she said icily, “that you have bigger things to be concerned about than whatever trouble you got Solas into. Or what he has told me. Those shems think you are the strongest mage they’ve seen since Andraste threw down the Imperium, and they want you to help me stop the mages and Templars from killing each other in public. The question is, are you staying to help?”

Felassan was not in the position to be making commitments, but he did not think Ellana wanted to hear that she needed to talk to Solas again. 

“Does this mean that you’re staying?” he turned the question on her. 

It was really remarkable, now that he thought of it. He spent the better part of a decade trying to build up one elf into a position where she could impact the general welfare of their people, only to see this different woman blunder into a position of potential greater authority simply by virtue of drawing the Dread Wolf’s gaze. 

Her lips thinned. “I think I have to,” she admitted. “It seems to be the best way to help my clan. I’ll find some other way to feed them this spring.” She looked back at him. “What about yours, lethallin?”

“My what?” he asked.

“Your clan.” 

Oh, his ‘clan’ would be sure to let him know how he was best able to help. 

“They’re fine,” he said with practiced evasion. 

Ellana looked harder at him. “Which one is it? I can’t believe they can spare their First for so long.” 

Felassan did his best not to squirm. He hated lying. It hadn’t really been possible in Elvhenan, when the world reacted instantly to the speaker’s true emotions and intentions. 

“You would not have heard of them. Your clan is from the Free Marches, correct? That is very far away.” 

“Try me. I’ve been traveling in the South for months.” 

Felassan bit the inside of his cheek. He could only think of one clan guaranteed not to dispute his claim to them, as they were all but one recently deceased. 

“Vir’nehn,” he lied, trying to keep his face neutral. 

Ellana nodded very slowly indeed after that. Felassan had the sense that he was standing in a hole, holding a shovel, and looking up at the ground. 

“Well,” Ellana said after another moment. “Pack up your things to travel. We’ll leave at dawn tomorrow. It will be pleasant to have another Dalish along to help make camp on the way to Redcliffe.” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The more that you say, the less I know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BTW, there will be no actual pregnancy in this fic. No narrative reason except that your author has had some negative experience in that respect, so the form of birth control they are using is "author can't write it". ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Felassan approached the meeting in the form of a fennec fox. It had been a long time since Fen’Harel had gathered his top agents for an all-hands meeting, and Felassan was in a whimsical mood. Or perhaps ‘spiteful’ was a better word for it. 

But if Fen’Harel felt compelled to preside over the meeting in the form of a giant, slavering, six-eyed wolf, why couldn’t Felassan also dress up for the occasion? He was the last to arrive, the other four elves already in place and magically cloaked in shadows, as if they hadn’t figured out who everyone else was some ages before. Felassan knew the woman who gave him a skeptical look as he wrapped his fluffy tail around himself and sat, at least: he’d been there when Fen’Harel freed her from Ghilan’nain’s laboratories. In life, Revas had some disconcerting scars but no longer bore vallaslin. Felassan did not know where she was in the world that woke, but in the Fade, she patiently waited for Fen’Harel’s instructions. 

Fen’Harel cleared his mighty lupine throat. “Is there a reason you are dressed as a slipper lining? And late?”

Felassan wrinkled his small, pointed nose. “Oh, I thought it was a costume party! Also, our fearless leader noticed a spirit of despair while she was roaming around the woods in the middle of the night, and she woke me up to help her deal with it.” 

Ellana had a great many expectations where he was concerned, most of them involving his willingness to wake up at all hours and throw spells at things on command. It was very tiring.

“Why did you not get me?” Fen’Harel demanded.

 _Because she thinks you need your beauty sleep, and you are even grumpier than usual when someone wakes you up_ , Felassan thought. 

“It was just the one demon,” Felassan said instead.

That explanation did not seem to satisfy the Dread Wolf, but he moved on. 

“I called you here to discuss changed assignments. I am sure you have all noticed the Breach. Felassan and I will contain that situation. The rest of you will turn all your attention to finding the orb.”

The other agents of Fen’Harel processed that. 

“Is it possible that it was destroyed in the explosion?” asked a second cloaked, hooded agent. Durnatha. She’d defected from Elgar’nan’s nobles after her husband’s life was used to power a new sky-boat. 

“No,” Fen’Harel said decisively. “If all the energy in the orb were vented at once, it would have taken down the Veil. That the Veil still holds in part is proof my focus still exists. The rest of you must track it. Look for large uses of magic. Places the Veil weakens.” 

Felassan sighed, putting his face on his paws. “So the plan is the same? Bring you the focus, take the Veil down again? Never mind certain changed circumstances with long brown braids and command of burgeoning military powers?”

“Do you have an objection?” Fen’Harel immediately asked. “If you can think of a better way to proceed, please, share it.” 

“Nobody is safe while the Breach is active,” Felassan pointed out.

“And if I had the orb, I could immediately fix that situation,” Fen’Harel snapped. 

The others were watching with their gazes jumping back and forth between the two of them. Most of their meetings had involved Fen’Harel delivering assignments and the rest of them delivering reports. Backtalk was not encouraged. 

“So you want us to abandon existing efforts to infiltrate the human power structures?” the last agent clarified. Reathe had been a priest of Mythal, just like Felassan. Unlike Felassan, he thought the Dread Wolf was a fine replacement for the All-Mother. 

“Nothing is more important than finding the orb,” Fen’Harel instructed. “Use every resource you have in that pursuit.” 

* * *

Solas was surprised awake by Nue crawling into his tent. His meeting had already adjourned, but he’d used the remaining time to scour the path ahead. The Veil had been weakened by many small rifts and the carnage of the fighting, but would be safe enough for Nue with Solas there to help clear her path. 

She smelled like ash and wood smoke, and she still wore all her clothes. It was an hour or so before dawn. 

Solas ruthlessly suppressed the instinctive moment of joy Nue’s presence sparked. 

“What are you doing?” he asked instead.

“Move over,” she replied, sounding tired and out of sorts. “It’s too cold to sleep alone.” 

“Nue,” he scolded her in a whisper. “As far as anyone but Felassan is aware, we barely know each other.”

“I don’t care if they think I’m easy. It’s cold!” she said, already pulling off her gloves and sticking her chilled hands into his sheepskin vest to warm them. 

“It’s not your reputation,” he attempted to convince her. “I would rather nobody considered our movements prior to the Conclave. Someone is bound to think you knew me before we met at the Temple if you sleep in here.”

She ignored him, toeing her boots off and pressing her feet into his bedroll. He jerked his shins away from her icy toes. 

“I had to kill another one of those cold demons,” she said. “It got me in the chest. And I’m tired. Can’t I just sleep here?” 

“Nue…” he sighed. “The humans are not like you. They are suspicious, and they assume everyone has some ulterior purpose for being here. Do not give them cause to doubt you.” 

“Look, I’ll act like it’s the first time I’ve ever seen your penis, alright?” she furiously whispered. She cleared her throat. 

“Oh, Creators, it’s huge!” she squawked at a volume that ensured that everyone within the circle of their campfire could hear her. Solas clenched his jaw so hard he felt his teeth shift. Someone stifled a laugh nearby, and he didn’t care to speculate as to that person’s identity.

“There,” Nue said with satisfaction, rolling over and scooting back against him, peremptorily demanding that he curl his body around her until she was warm. 

After that, Solas was awake for good, his cheeks aflame. So he waited until she was asleep, and then he slunk out of their tent to go reinforce the wards against demons around the camp, ignoring the grins that the scouts on watch sent his way. 

* * *

Battlefields all smelled alike. Wood smoke from pyres and campfires, wet earth from the mud kicked up by marching soldiers and horses, the stink of bodies both alive and decaying, and the unmistakable, gut-churning scent of burning flesh. It was so familiar to Felassan as to be nearly nostalgic.

Their leader, though--Trouble, their Herald, their putative savior marked with Fen’Harel’s magic and Andruil’s arrows--she was less prepared to witness man’s inhumanity to man. 

They were swarmed by Templars and mages both as they approached the refugee camp that was their destination. Felassan barely thought twice about tossing a few fireballs into groups of assailants, and Fen’Harel had concocted or recollected an ice spell that any Circle or Dalish mage might have known. The Inquisition soldiers that were their escort were all seasoned warriors. Felassan scarcely noted the arrows flying from their rear and finding their targets in exposed necks and faces. He expected arrows in the midst of the battle. 

But when it was all over, and the Seeker was dragging bodies into a pile for examination and later disposal, Ellana stood over the fallen form of a young mage in bloodstained robes. He wasn’t even an elf, but he was younger than all of them, and he had a Dalish arrow four inches deep in an eye socket. Ellana’s face had gone pale under her tan, and she abruptly wheeled and bolted behind a crumbling wall a few paces away. The loud sounds of retching soon followed.

The Seeker sighed, wandering away with the dwarf to give the Dalish woman a little privacy with her reaction to the violence. Fen’Harel waited until they were gone, and then he followed Ellana. 

That left Felassan at loose ends, except he wasn’t in Halamshiral or even an unspoiled wilderness. He was in the middle of a shoddy human refugee camp, and there was nothing he really cared to do there. He wished he could leave, but there was nowhere for him to run. After a few minutes, he went after Ellana as well.

Felassan found her crouched over a puddle of her own sick, eyes wet. Fen’Harel, squatting next to her, held her braids out of her face with one hand and rubbed her back with the other. 

He gave Felassan an unfriendly look and stood to fend him off. He pulled the other elf a few paces away. 

“Give her a moment,” Fen’Harel said in a voice pitched not to carry back to the Dalish woman. “She has never had to kill a person before.”

Felassan steamed at the ancient rebel’s sympathy for Ellana’s innocence. Felassan did not particularly enjoy killing people either. Felassan had, in fact, made strong arguments that he and Fen’Harel ought to kill rather fewer people, over the years. Felassan had not gotten any sympathy for his position against killing people, and he certainly had not gotten a moment and a backrub for his doubts. 

“And you, of course, are just the man to help her get over that.” 

Fen’Harel frowned at being accurately described, but he could hardly object.

“Well, good,” Felassan said, his own stomach still tight with anger. “When I heard her spilling her breakfast, I was worried you’d gone and given her an entirely different problem to take care of.” 

Felassan had, from time to time, thought that Fen’Harel would kill him one day. He hadn’t ever really expected the man to hit him, though, because the days when the two of them had gotten into fistfights were vanished even from the memory of the Fade, along with the names they’d borne at the time. 

Fen’Harel almost did it, though. His fists curled. He tensed his shoulders. He shifted his footing. Felassan braced for it. 

He was interrupted only by the sound of their Herald sniffing noisily and wiping her face on her sleeve. 

“I’m fine,” Ellana announced. “You can stop talking about me.” 

* * *

“So, who’s the Keeper here?” Ellana asked, hands propped on her hips. The refugees at the crossroads were hungry, cold, and sick. Someone was severely delinquent in their duties to have allowed all those people to suffer so. 

Ellana had assumed that the “Revered Mother” she had been sent to meet was in charge of organizing for all the needs of her flock there, but the useless woman had said something about offering spiritual comfort and fluttered her hands helplessly when informed of the more pressing needs of the people there. 

“These are humans, Herald,” Solas told her. It irked her greatly that he would not call her by her name in public. “They do not have a Keeper.”

She waved at him impatiently. “I know they don’t call it that. But there has to be someone who’s responsible here, even if they’re doing a bad job. Who makes sure they all eat, usually?”

Varric sighed. “Hate to break it to you, but a lot of them don’t. The local lord is supposed to provide security, but he probably exploded at the Conclave. The Inquisition can pick up that slack, but that’s all they can do.” 

“The war between the mages and Templars caused this,” the Seeker stated. “We may not be able to do anything for these people, but the Inquisition can address the root cause and eventually improve their lives.” 

Ellana snorted at that. “What do you mean, we can’t do anything?” she demanded. “I see a lot of able-bodied adults here. Felassan,” she snapped. The man was idly chewing on a sprig of elfroot nearby. “Your clan must have at least tried to train you as a Keeper at some point. Go--” she flapped her hand at the refugees. “Go do something.” 

Felassan looked surprised to be so addressed. “Oh, no,” he said sweetly. “Nobody ever thought I was worth listening to. You seem to have matters well in hand.” 

“Me?” Ellana said. “I’m just a hunter.”

Felassan gave a pointed look at her hand. 

“I can’t tell all those humans what to do with a magical mark. This is for closing rifts,” she protested.

“They think you speak for their god,” Solas suggested. “If you help them see to their immediate, material needs, you are proof of that divine influence.”

Ellana was skeptical of that. The Maker wasn’t going to allocate warm clothing among everyone there. Nobody thought the Keeper was acting for Sylaise when she decided it was time to make more salve for chilblains in the winter. 

“If you need some help, Solas seems to have a lot of ideas for how to best help the poor and dispossessed,” Felassan said, giving the other man a long, cool stare. 

Solas opened his mouth to say something in response, but Ellana turned to him gratefully.

“Oh, could you, actually? I was going to head out on the King’s Road to talk to some of those Templars about what their problem is. Could you figure out what these people need and see if you can handle it?” 

He got a pinched expression on his face, but he sighed when he looked at a small family huddling together for warmth. 

“I will see what I can do,” he said reluctantly. 

Ellana leaned in and kissed his cheek, even if he squirmed for it. 

* * *

There were a few difficulties tracking down a Templar to talk to. Most of them preferred to attack first, rather than submit to a casual chat with a small party including a Seeker, a Dalish elf, and a mage of the apparent same extraction. 

“Can you go get me one?” she asked Felassan as she studied the burning battlefield where mages and Templars tried to kill each other in exciting ways. 

“I don’t know what you’ve heard, but they don’t make good pets,” Felassan said. “You have to feed them lyrium, and they can’t be trained not to snap at the mages.” 

“I just want to hear what they want,” she repeated. 

Eventually, the dwarf shot a crossbow bolt through the thigh of a man who’d lost most of his armor in the melee, and the Herald got to have her chat. 

Or she tried to, anyway. She wrapped a tourniquet around his leg and promised him that she’d have it healed if he’d just succinctly explain to her what his fellows wanted to stop the war. The human’s face was red and blotchy, his hair oily from sleeping rough. His eyes rolled wildly in his head from the pain and his anger. 

Felassan noticed that she had a familiar leather-bound notebook, and as the Templar writhed on the ground, shrieking slurs and imprecations, she got out a slim pencil and settled herself cross-legged next to him, ready to write. Fen’Harel never gave him presents. 

“Alright,” she said to him, scooting out of range of a flailing fist. “I am here on behalf of the Inquisition. What’s your story?”

It was mixed between a lot of threats, but the man eventually admitted that he was a Ser Kidric of Highever, and had been responsible for guarding the Chantry there until he heard that the Circles had fallen. He and some friends had marched for Kinloch Hold but found it empty. Since then, he had been hunting down individual mages.

“So, you’ve just been out killing random mages for a year?” Ellana asked him, appalled.

Not random mages. All mages, he told them. All mages were dangerous, and if they would not submit to the Circles, they had to die for the safety of everyone else. 

Felassan sighed. In his experience, once some people got it in their heads that another group of people were better off dead, there was very little to be said to change any minds. You couldn’t reach a compromise between “I would like to live” and “I want you to die.” 

Ellana stared down sadly at the irrational man as he raved about saving his country from the robes and the knife-ears who would destroy all he loved. He swore vengeance against all four of them. The Maker, he said, had commanded him to put all mages and those who harbored them from the face of the earth. 

Ellana heaved out a long exhale and stood up, putting Fen’Harel’s notebook away in her pack. 

“I do not foresee any success with the Templars,” she announced.

“Yeah, no shit,” Varric said. Even Cassandra looked disappointed.

Ellana’s mouth twisted as she considered Felassan. “You had better hope the mages are more reasonable,” she warned him, as though he could be expected to be responsible for a lot of people he had nothing more in common with than the ability to set his clothes on fire. 

“Herald, what should we do with the Templar?” Cassandra asked. 

“Can we take prisoners?” Ellana asked, expression darkening.

The Seeker shook her head. 

Ellana grimaced, pulled out her belt knife, and slit the Templar’s throat.

* * *

Nue was quiet that night as they ate dinner in the Inquisition encampment in the hills south of Redcliffe. Her mood seemed to sink with every minute. Solas had enjoyed watching her instruct Felassan on how to build a campfire.

“Did they kick you out because you were lazy? Or did your Keeper coddle you because your magic came when you were young? June’s balls, you can’t put hardwood in the inner layer!” 

Felassan glared and set it all on fire with a pass of his hand, tying off the spell so that it did not even require the wood to fuel it. Nue sniffed disdainfully, then hesitantly wiped her face with her hands. “I didn’t mean that,” she said after a minute. “I am sorry that I snapped at you.” 

Felassan looked startled to receive the apology. “It has been a long day,” he said. 

“Yes,” Nue agreed. “My Keeper would tell me to take a walk and clear my head.” Her full lips compressed. “I suppose I should go take her advice.” 

She put down her bowl of rabbit and buckwheat stew and stood, looking away from the circle of firelight.

“I’m going to circle the perimeter,” she told the group. “I won’t be far.”

The Seeker grunted an affirmative, focused on her own dinner.

A few minutes after Nue walked away, Solas silently left the campfire to follow her.

She was hard to track because she moved more quietly through the woods than he could, but Solas had an idea of where he would find her. 

She stood on the ridge of the southern hills, staring off to the northeast. Solas frowned to see her there so vulnerable. Anyone could have come upon her there, and all she had was a belt knife. She had no magic, no sword, not even her bow. But her senses informed her of his approach, despite his attempts to be quiet, and she turned to watch him walk up to stand next to her. 

She wordlessly reached out a hand to him, and he pulled her into his arms. His attempts at subterfuge were failing, and someone would wonder where he’d gone, but Nue had seemed so unhappy the entire day. She rested the point of her chin on his shoulder and exhaled, arms tight against his back.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said, sounding exhausted. Solas thought that was likely a new feeling for her; she had always seemed to know exactly what she wanted to do before.

“In regards to what?” he murmured without letting her go.

“Everything! The problems are so big I can barely think about them. Creators, the Breach, the mages and the Templars, the humans who want me to come up with a new religion for them to follow…” She rubbed her face into his shoulder. 

Solas was familiar with that feeling. Drowning under the pull of all the world’s needs, desperate to get his head above the surface. Guilt gnawed at him as Nue pulled away to stare down at her Mark. 

“And all I can think about is my clan. Worrying about them. Templars like that man today...they must be everywhere. And they _need_ me.” Her face was distraught. 

Solas swallowed. “It will be harder now, but I could still get you away,” he said. “Many people know your face, but I could contact some...friends, clear a route for you to make your way back to the Free Marches.” 

Nue tilted her head back to look at him, clearly tempted. 

“Is that what you would do?” she asked softly. “If you knew there was some vast problem that only you could solve, would you walk away from it?” 

He took her point. “No,” he murmured. “I would stay and try to fix it.” 

She nodded, then leaned into him and kissed him lingeringly. He opened his mouth to enjoy the fleeting softness of her lips against his own, and the warmth of her breath on his face. Nue was everything that was still worth savoring in the world.

When she pulled away, she told him, “I know you would, Blue Eyes. That’s why you were there in the first place, weren’t you? Trying to solve this horrible war against the mages. It’s not right.” 

Solas wished it were that simple. “It is not right,” he could truthfully agree with her. The suffering of the humans and elves and even Qunari with magic was a mere corollary to the fundamental flaw in the world, but it needed to end just as much as the sundering of the world from its dreams. 

She took a deep breath. “That is why I can’t go home. I want to. But I have to stay and try to fix this.”

Solas tucked a strand of hair out of her face. “I understand,” he said. “And I will help you, as best I can. All of my abilities are at your disposal.”

“Are they really?” Nue said, taking a step away and looking off to the northeast again. She took a deep breath. “What if I asked you for something you didn’t want to do?” 

Solas frowned. “What are you thinking?” He had a sudden premonition.

Nue continued to stare off toward her distant clan. “I need someone to go home for me. Make sure they’re okay. Things feel like they’re falling apart. And it seems small against all of this, but they’re going to go hungry if I’m not there.” She looked imploringly over her shoulder at him. The question was implied. 

Solas sputtered. “You have resources now through the Inquisition. Use them! You can demand that they send food to your clan. You can demand that they send soldiers to protect your clan! If you are not sure how to negotiate the issue, I can--”

“I don’t trust them!” Nue cut him off. “I don’t trust a single one of them. I trust _you_.” 

Solas stiffened, guilt locking his knees and paralyzing his diaphragm. Why shouldn’t she trust him? How careful he’d been to give her no reason to doubt him. He’d never done a single thing for her, but she thought she could trust him with her people. He was filled with fear to equal his sweaty, nauseous objection to the idea. 

“Nue,” he protested. “You should not have to do this alone. This is not your fight. This is mine.”

She pointed wordlessly at the Breach, still visible in the sky that evening, nearly a hundred miles away. 

“You haven’t come up with any solution that doesn’t involve me fixing that,” she said, even though he’d wracked his brain every waking and sleeping hour, searching for one. “I’d love to hear it, if you have once, but I have to stay, so I need you to be the one who goes.” 

Her lower lip curled over her teeth. She’d thought about this. He wondered how long it had taken her to build herself up to make the request. 

“You are right not to trust the rest of the Inquisition. They have their own ends, and they seek their own power, and that power inevitably corrupts. They will use you up for this,” he argued. “Let me do what I can to save you from that!” 

Nue would not back down, but then, she hadn’t in the entire time he’d known her. 

“I understand what you’re saying, Solas. I do. But I need to know they’re safe,” she said, gripping the edge of his sleeve. “I can’t do anything else unless I know that.” 

“Do not make me leave you to do this,” he argued in a louder voice. “ _Ar_ _lath_ _ma_ , Nue. Ellana. Do you know enough elven to understand that? I love you.” He couldn’t let all the consequences of his mistakes fall on her alone. “I cannot leave you here to die if the Inquisition fails.” 

Her eyes only tightened. 

“Blue Eyes…” She curled a fist under her chin, clenching her shoulders together. “You love that I suck your cock. You love that I took care of you when you were sick. You love that I treat you like a person who matters. Me? You barely know me.”

She could not have hurt him more if she’d slapped him in the face. She leaned into him, eyes creasing in concern at his staggered expression. But she steeled herself. 

“You were ready to walk away and never see me again a month ago, because what’s important to _you_ is whatever mage-rights intrigue Felassan has gotten you stuck in, and what’s important to _me_ is my clan,” she pointed out. “You want to see that through here too--don’t say that’s not a part of it. You’ll just have to trust that I’ll take care of that.” 

Solas struggled to fill his lungs as Nue concluded, “I’m not making you go. I can’t. But I’m asking you to. If you want to do something _for_ me, go make sure my clan is safe from all this.”

She patted him lightly on the arm, then left him with the space to make his choices, just like every time before. She walked back down the hill to the campfire, donning the mantle of their Herald as she went. 

* * *

Felassan hefted another sack of salt-cured hams into the back of the cart and rubbed his back. Unlike most of the other people helping to provision the small expedition, he didn’t begrudge Fen’Harel’s Trouble all the supplies she was sending off to her clan, even if he privately thought they were unlikely to appreciate Fereldan pickled eggs and Orlesian candied goose livers. It was all the Inquisition had to spare. 

He objected to being left to mind a Dalish elf who had made it extremely clear that he was on her list of potential villains--and not for any of the reasons she really ought to have been angry at him. 

“You are going to let Solas leave,” Ellana had told him, poking him in the chest with her eating knife for good measure. “It’s on my orders, and it’s more important than whatever shady business you had planned for him.” 

He had to admit that she was rather magnificent in her angry intensity. Her features were finest when they were animated, and her brown eyes snapped with fire as she very unnecessarily threatened him. 

Felassan would have laughed if he didn’t believe that the muscular woman was capable of getting through his cartilage with a butter knife. And if it weren’t a little bit sexy, how angrily protective she was over a man who had absolutely no need of her protection. 

“Without challenging your authority, can I point out that you have your expert on the Fade delivering preserved fruit to the Free Marches?” Felassan said. “I am sure he is capable, but surely there are other people you could have entrusted this delicate, monthslong mission to.” 

Ellana’s eyelids lowered, but her expression was slightly canny. She did not respond. 

“Ah, but that’s not all of it, is it?” Felassan guessed. “You just wanted to get him out of here instead. Ha. Well done, you.” 

She dug the blunt tip of the knife a little farther into his chest. “You are going to _let him go_.” 

Felassan lifted his hands in the air, palms out. 

“Isn’t that up to Solas?” he asked. 

Ellana relaxed her knife. “He said that you could handle the magical issues until he gets back. The Seeker agrees. Or maybe we’ll get the hole in the sky fixed first, and then we can all go home.” 

That was a little different from what Fen’Harel had told _him_ , which was that Felassan was to make no large decisions beyond keeping Ellana alive and the Breach stable without consulting him first. Felassan was looking forward to getting his days clear, but dreams would still belong to Fen’Harel. 

“Do you think he’ll stay up there in the Free Marches?” Felassan asked her incredulously. “He is not a fan of the Dalish, present company excluded.” 

Ellana wrinkled her nose. “If he only knows you and your clan, he may have gotten the wrong impression.” 

“You think so?” Felassan drawled. “You think he’s mistaken about the Dalish sleeping in the dirt and telling highly inaccurate stories about the Creators to feel better about their miserable lives?” 

“Maybe he mistakenly thinks we’re all a lot of smug, lying opportunists?” Ellana said sweetly and bumped Felassan just over the heart with her knife, dropping it to let it clatter on his toes. Felassan was confused for a moment until he realized she was talking about the wrong elf.

But she had already swept off to gather a few more spare crates of nug jerky. 

* * *

Her Blue Eyes was deeply unhappy to be leaving with the convoy. The inner circle of the Inquisition were not dismayed to be losing the less useful of their mages, but seemed to find Ellana’s concern for her clan in her absence surprising.

 _I knew the names of all the people in the world that I cared about for the first decades of my life_ , she wanted to scream at them. _Give me a second to adjust to taking care of two whole countries._

When she thought about the size of the task, her chest felt too tight to breathe. The Breach was one thing--so far beyond her experience as to be nearly incomprehensible, but still a discrete task. The casual way in which leaders of the entire world’s human community seemed to expect that Ellana would resolve problems that had been lingering for decades was a little harder to bear. 

At least Solas would be out of the middle of it. He’d be safe with her clan, and her clan would be safer with him. He was no trained killer like Felassan, but he’d defended himself well enough against the rogue mages and Templars. He could help make up for Ellana’s absence until she returned. 

Ellana approached the cart driver, who was hitching her team to head north from Haven. They’d take ship from West Hills to Wycome, then look for her clan to the west. 

Ellana was glad that Sister Leliana had been willing to spare elves to go with Solas. It would be reassuring to Clan Lavellan, and Solas would be more comfortable as well traveling with others of the People. 

“Here,” Ellana said, handing off a packet of sealed letters to the young, auburn-haired woman. “I have some personal letters for my Keeper, my cousin Mahanon, and Solas. Could you give these to them?”

“Of course,” the cart driver said. “Now, or when we get there?” 

“When you get there, please,” Ellana said, blushing a little. 

The woman smiled at her. “I understand. I will.”

“Do you have everything you need?” Ellana asked, looking at the laden cart.

“I think so,” the woman replied. “Four elves should be able to make pretty good time. We’ll be there in three weeks or so. And all of us know how to watch ourselves.”

“Thank you for doing this,” Ellana said very sincerely. She felt lighter already for one major worry lifted off her mind. Her clan would be safe. Solas would be safe. “This means so much to me. What’s your name, by the way?

“Charter,” said the cart driver, reaching out to shake her hand. “And it’s my pleasure, Herald.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Kinkshame me on Twitter @YTCShepard or Tumblr @ YoursTrulyCommanderShepard


End file.
